March 16th, 2016

Dear Williamsburg Students, Parents and Staff,

As you know last spring our Me to We Students under the leadership of Mme Hannigan and Mrs. Rajapske donated a substantial amount of charity money to Free the Children.  We have been patiently waiting for an update on how our money has been put to good use in Africa.  Parents, we would love for you to include your children in reading this update as they all worked so very hard to raise money for this worthy cause.   Please read below a detailed update from Alex Rayment, Educational Programming Coordinator Free the Children.

We hope that you are all enjoying the March Break!  Sincerely, Ms. Griffiths

Africa Update:

Currently Free The Children has completed three school houses in Irkaat, and the schoolhouse that Williamsburg has fundraised to construct will be the fourth once complete! Through you and your students’ support of school nutrition programs, students have been receiving healthy lunches for the past 6 months consisting of vegetables from their school community garden but also more substantial supplements such as maize and beans. As a result of these programs, we have found that students have more of an incentive to come to school and they have better educational outcomes, as they are able to be more attentive in classes and better process what they are learning.

Additionally, as directed, a portion of your contributions have been channeled toward outfitting furniture and supplies for the school houses and other educational infrastructure projects in Irkaat. As such, these funds have specifically gone to providing furniture for a nearby teachers’ accommodations, as well as filling in gaps of need for supplies in the school houses. I was so happy to hear that your funds were able to support specifically the outfitting of these accommodations, as this area of programming is such a unique and vital aspect of our educational programming, yet it is not always a widely-known part of our educational model. By creating livable and attractive teachers’ accommodations, teachers are able to maximize their teaching time and time management as they no longer have a need to spend hours each day travelling, and of course the students also benefit because they get supported during the morning and evening as opposed to only during school hours.

Finally, I know that you also directed your funds toward supporting our teacher training program that takes place with teachers from across all of our partner communities in Kenya. Our teacher training programming runs based on the school year schedule, and unfortunately was affected by the strike that took place in Kenya throughout last summer and into the first couple months of this school year. As such, our team is looking at running this next training once the current school year
comes to a close, therefore your funds will be supporting this training at that time. Although timing is tentative at the moment, I have asked that they update me as they finalize more!

These are all the updates that I was able to get from our International Programming team at this time, however I am still waiting on an update directly from our community teams on the progress of Irkaat’s fourth school house thanks to you and your students’ incredible support last year and from year’s past.

Wishing you and safe a relaxing March break and I look forward to connecting when we both return!  Alex Rayment